Michael Savage

[Employment Insurance, June 16th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, the incompetence of the government is staggering. Each day it fiddles around while the unemployment situation deteriorates, bankruptcies continue to rise and household debt spins out of control. Each day we hear stories of constituents who have fallen through the cracks of our social infrastructure and are getting little help from the government.

How can the government leave this Friday for the barbecue circuit knowing that its inaction on the economy and EI has left tens of thousands of Canadians without a way out of this Conservative recession?

[Employment Insurance, June 15th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, last week, the Prime Minister suggested that he might have seen the light and finally be prepared to join with those calling for changes to employment insurance.

However, that memo did not get to the Minister of Human Resources and Skills Development who contradicted the Prime Minister the very next day. Then the Prime Minister contradicted the minister the very same day. This confusion might be amusing if it were not so serious. While this improv routine continues, Canadians are losing jobs. They need help and they need it immediately.

The government now acknowledges that additional EI measures are necessary. Will it deliver that help now?

[The Stanley Cup, June 15th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, this summer, the Stanley Cup will come to Cole Harbour again. The Pittsburgh Penguins, led by captain Sidney Crosby, won the championship against the strong Red Wings in Detroit on Friday night.

At the age of 21, Sid has been the most celebrated number one draft pick in years. He has won the Art Ross Trophy, the Hart Memorial Trophy and the Lester B. Pearson Award. He is the youngest captain in NHL history and is now a Stanley Cup champion.

Congratulations to the Red Wings and their great coach, Mike Babcock, and fellow Atlantic Canadian, Danny Cleary, of Harbour Grace, and sympathies to his loyal MP from Avalon.

Sidney Crosby may have won his first Stanley Cup, but he has been a champion to kids everywhere, particularly in Cole Harbour, for years. He is a young man of grace and determination whose efforts on the ice are matched by his personal humility and generosity. Stories of his quiet contribution to his community abound back home. He has earned the respect and devotion of legions of boys and girls who now know beyond a doubt that nice guys do not always finish last. In fact they can win the Stanley Cup, and like Joey DiPenta a couple of years ago, bring it home to Cole Harbour.

Way to go, Sidney Crosby.

[Persons with Disabilities, June 12th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, it is very sad. The Conservatives have one lens they use for everything, and that is political. The rest, good public policy, economic prudence, social justice, equity, means nothing to them.

This fund was supposed to be set up for all Canadians with disabilities. It now appears to have become a Conservative slush fund. There is no plausible explanation how 94% of any program could end up in a minority party and only there. It does not make any sense.

I invite the minister to speak to Canadians with disabilities and ask them how they feel. Could she honestly justify this level of political abuse in a program designed for persons with disabilities?

[Persons with Disabilities, June 12th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, last year, when the government announced the enabling accessibility fund, people in the disability community raised concerns right away that the fund was specifically designed to provide money for Conservative ministers. They called it “pork barrel politics”.

That turned out to be entirely true. In fact, not only did the Minister of Finance get his project worth $15 million, but fully 94% of all funding went to Conservative ridings. Can the minister explain the mathematical equation she employed in order to send 94% of all funding to Conservative ridings?

[Nova Scotia Provincial Election, June 12th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, Nova Scotia has a new premier and a new government following Tuesday's election. I want to congratulate all the candidates who ran for office from all parties, showing their commitment to Nova Scotia.

I want to personally congratulate the re-elected MLAs from my own riding: Marilyn More, Trevor Zinck and Becky Kent. I look forward to continuing to work with them to improve our communities.

I am thrilled to see Andrew Younger win my home provincial constituency of Dartmouth East. He is an outstanding advocate for Dartmouth East and will be a fabulous Liberal MLA, as will Kelly Regan, the wonderful new MLA in Bedford-Birch Cove. I also want to salute Steve McNeil, our leader in Nova Scotia, who fought a tremendously strong and honourable campaign.

I want to congratulate our new premier, NDP Premier Darrell Dexter, somebody I have known longer than either one of us would care to admit. He is an honourable public servant who has well earned this victory. While we belong to different political parties, I know him to be a dedicated, honest person who will put the province first.

I join all Nova Scotians in wishing him well as he takes on the difficult task of governing in uneasy times.

[Business of Supply, June 11th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for the concern she has for seniors in her own riding. There are a lot of people in Canada, and around the world, who are looking at the issue of poverty and how it relates to seniors.

Our colleagues in the Senate have come out with a very excellent report entitled “Canada's Aging Population: Seizing the Opportunity”. It has a number of recommendations, one of which says:

Current income security measures for our poorest seniors are not meeting their basic needs.

As much as OAS and GIS are an improvement over what we had before, they do not even meet the poverty line. The alternative federal budget had some ideas about the GIS. We have heard in our committee from seniors. I talked about CARP, and the work that Susan Eng and her group have done. Many seniors across the country have come to talk to us as we have travelled the country.

There are some things we can do. Housing is still a big issue among seniors. We need to invest in seniors housing. We need to make sure that we do something to solidify and strengthen private pension plans. That is a big issue for a lot of people. There is no question about that. I think that the single biggest thing for the poorest seniors is the need to increase the GIS.

As Liberals proposed during last year's election, we need to look at that GIS and make sure that all Canadian seniors who cannot go out and earn the money they are otherwise losing have the basic needs to lead a productive life in their senior years.

[Business of Supply, June 11th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, the reason we would not want to go back to 1997 is that we might not have the CPP today if the government had not stepped in and done something about it.

At the time, it was not an easy decision. We could talk about the returns that have been year to year, but back in 1997 we were in desperate trouble. Canadians today would have had a lot less money to look forward to in their retirement years.

I commend Prime Minister Chrétien and Finance Minister Martin and the others. The member does not have to take my word for it. The Caledon Institute, which I am sure my colleague knows well, which does tremendous work, said in its report that this huge reduction in poverty among seniors is due largely to improvements in public pension programs, including OAS and GIS but also the Canada and Quebec pension plans.

I think it was a very positive thing for Canadians that we did that. It provided a basis for some financial foundation today in spite of the difficult markets and difficult circumstances that Canadians are facing.

[Business of Supply, June 11th, 2009]

Madam Speaker, one of the things that all the provinces that have anti-poverty strategies have indicated is that the federal government needs to have an anti-poverty strategy.

In fact, let us look at the report from Ontario's poverty reduction strategy, “Breaking the Cycle”. Again I will mention Deb Matthews, who has done fabulous work on this. She was at the Canadian Social Forum in Calgary a couple of weeks ago and spoke about the work she has done.

She specifically has a chapter in this report entitled “The Federal Role”, because we do live in a country that has federal, provincial, even municipal jurisdictions. There are NGOs and organizations that do a lot of good work, but there has to be leadership at the federal level. This is as true on the senior side as it is anywhere else. For Canada to suggest that we do not need a national anti-poverty strategy is simply wrong. There are things that we can do.

I was very pleased that in the Liberal election platform last year, called “Richer, Fairer, Greener”, one of the recommendations was to increase the guaranteed income supplement by $600 a year for Canada's lowest-income seniors, and by $800 a year for low-income senior couples. It goes on to talk about changing the CPP disability requirements to ensure that those with episodic illnesses, such as MS or others, do not jeopardize their ability to collect CPP or QPP disability benefits.

We have to understand that Canadians are living longer now. That is the good news. That is due to advances in health and welfare. The problem is that a lot of people are not able to afford those later years in spite of the fact that in many cases they planned for it for a long period of time.

We have examples of people, like the Nortel employees, who are facing a very difficult circumstance now that they never planned on. They never thought this would happen to them, and who would blame them? There is stuff happening in Canada to seniors that is simply not fair.

How do we fix it? There are organizations such as CARP. Susan Eng, from CARP, made a very strong presentation to the anti-poverty committee the other day about what she thinks has to happen for seniors. CARP is calling for social change to bring financial security, equitable and timely access to health care and freedom from discrimination for Canada's elderly, ensuring that the marketplace serves the needs and expectations of this generation of persons aged 50 and over, and building a sense of community and shared values. It calls for more relief for retirees and better protection of seniors. Like many others, it is saying that the GIS is the perfect thing to invest in and we should increase the GIS.

[Business of Supply, June 11th, 2009]

Madam Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the extraordinarily distinguished member for Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor.

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to speak to this issue and I congratulate my colleague from the NDP for bringing it forward for discussion today. Retirement incomes, the life of our seniors in this country, is a huge issue that faces many Canadians. I think all Canadians are feeling this, whether it is them personally, whether it is their family, or whether it is their neighbours. This is a huge issue that affects many Canadians in the country today. I think all MPs have heard the stories. I have certainly heard from seniors in my riding, many of whom thought they might okay in their retirement years and all of a sudden have to relook at their income, and in some cases, have to go back to work years after they retired, because they do not have the resources they need.

There are number of negatives issues that affect all Canadians, or a large percentage of Canadians. The punitive tax on income trusts that was brought in, in sort of a blitzkrieg motion by the government a couple of years ago, hurt Canadians. I very well recall one of my constituents calling me up and saying, “Mike, look, I didn't invest in income trusts. I'm not a big investor. I never looked for very much of a return. I was always very prudent. However, when at that time the opposition leader, now the Prime Minister, said he was not going to tax them, I thought, okay, nobody can go back on that”. So he invested, and he lost $16,000. That may not sound like a lot to some people, but it is a lot of money to a lot of people in this country.

The other thing, of course, that has hurt a lot of Canadians is the falling stock markets. A lot of people who thought they were fine are now being hurt very severely by the falling stock markets. I have heard people say, “Well, they should not have invested in the stock market. Maybe they should have invested in a more secure mechanism”. However, people make decisions in a lot of cases based on advice of others, and some people had been told, “Look, the market always goes up. Why don't you invest?”

I recall not that many years ago that people were rushing away from defined benefit pension plans into defined contribution pension plans, thinking this was the way to go. All of a sudden the market is bringing in 15% a year and people think, “I'll get into that”. A lot of those people have been hurt very badly. That has hurt an awful lot of Canadians. That has hurt a lot of citizens in this country who thought their retirement years were going to be okay.

It is a very sad story, because if people my age or younger all of a sudden find themselves with less income than they thought, at least they have the option of perhaps going back to work, or they at least have more options in terms of replacing income. If it happens to a senior in this country, the options are very limited. So we have to do something as a country to protect those people.

I want to focus my remarks, though, specifically on the poorest Canadians, Canadians who are living in poverty.

There has been some good news over the last number of years to offset the bad news—the solid work by previous governments, particularly the Chrétien-Martin government of the last decade, which made tough decisions. People look back and say, “Well, that was easy”. It was not easy. It was a tough decision to rescue the CPP and to make it financially solvent for years to come. That was done in a forward-thinking process just over a decade ago. It was the right thing to do.

The other thing is that we have increased seniors' benefits in this country and it has made a difference in Canada. OAS and GIS are very important. We have shown in Canada that we do value senior citizens.

As a matter of fact, the rate of poverty has gone down over the last number of years among seniors. If we look at a report from the Caledon Institute, entitled “The federal role in poverty reduction”, which was presented to the human resources committee a couple of months ago as part of our study, it stated:

Canada has made substantial strides in reducing poverty among the elderly, the rate plummeting from 29.0 percent in 1976 to 5.4 percent in 2006.... Canada ranks third lowest among 23 industrialized nations, bested only by Finland (5.2 percent) and Sweden (2.7 percent).

This huge reduction in poverty is due largely to improvements in public pension programs (Old Age Security, the Guaranteed Income Supplement and the Canada and Quebec Pension Plans) and the historic rise in the labour force participation of women, who thereby become eligible for pensions in their own right from the Canada and Quebec Pension Plans and employer-sponsored plans....

However, the work is not finished: Some seniors remain in poverty....

The report particularly cites single elderly women and single elderly men, with single elderly women having a much higher rate. So that is an issue.

Even since then we have seen more seniors face very difficult times in this country. We need to have a national anti-poverty plan that includes seniors. One would think that was self-evident. The human resources committee, under the distinguished leadership of the member for Niagara West—Glanbrook, who has worked very hard, and other members in the House today, has proceeded on that work.

On Monday of this week we got word that, in the periodic review of the Human Rights Council of the UN, Canada was asked to look at certain things in terms of making life better for its citizens. One of the key recommendations was recommendation 17, which stated that the Government of Canada should have an anti-poverty strategy. Amazingly, the response to that from the Government of Canada was this:

Canada does not accept recommendation 17 or the related recommendation from Ghana to develop a national strategy to eliminate poverty. Provinces and territories have jurisdiction in this area of social policy and have developed their own programs to address poverty. For example, four provinces have implemented poverty reduction strategies.

There are now six provinces that have poverty reduction strategies. Quebec has always been a leader in terms of progressive social policies. The province of Newfoundland and Labrador, long before it had money rolling in, decided it would have an anti-poverty strategy. There was a meeting with the minister at that time, Shawn Skinner, who outlined some of the stuff that the province of Newfoundland and Labrador was doing.

Ontario, under the distinguished leadership of Deb Matthews, has an anti-poverty strategy. Manitoba now has one. Nova Scotia has one, and although I do not think it is particularly robust, it is at least a good start. The province of New Brunswick has one on the way as well.

One thing that all those provinces have in common when they talk about poverty is that the federal government has to come to the table. At this point in time--